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At last there was a sound one that might have been going on before, but kept by the distance from reaching Dick's ear a cock crowed loudly, and there was a loud cackling from the barn where the fowls roosted. Then came the lowing of a cow; but all was perfectly still at the house, and it seemed astounding that no one should have been alarmed.
Our Greek professor, Doctor R., was a bit of a snob, and the plebeians of the class, much the largest part, always held him in ill will; and as his garden bordered on our section, and his fowls roosted in the trees overhanging the green, we one day decided to mulct him in a supper.
Here some birds had roosted in the hazels by the fence, and the cub stood watching them, like the fox beneath the desired but distant grapes. A rough, mongrel sheep-dog, having missed his master, who had been carousing in the inn that evening, chanced to be trotting homeward to the farm on the hill, and, sniffing at the gate, discovered the cub in the hedgerow.
The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around, in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers; sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time, from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from wild adventures which would grow in grandeur every time they were described at the English or American fireside, and at last outgrow the possible itself.
They availed themselves of the rare privilege to the fullest extent, for some tried the pleasing experiment of drinking milk while standing on their heads, others lent a charm to leapfrog by eating pie in the pauses of the game, cookies were sown broadcast over the field, and apple turnovers roosted in the trees like a new style of bird.
Next morning Camaralzaman woke up before the bird left its perch, and no sooner did it take flight than he followed it again with as little success as the previous day, only stopping to eat some herbs and fruit he found by the way. In this fashion he spent ten days, following the bird all day and spending the night at the foot of a tree, whilst it roosted on the topmost bough.
Dead silence reigned over the garden, and Cold, with a capital C, gripped the land. Heaven help any bird who roosted on an empty stomach on such a night! It would freeze to its perch before morning, most like. Indeed, our thrush had a neighbor, a hedge-sparrow just newly arrived from "somewhere up north." It had come in after dark, and therefore had no time to feed.
The world narrowed itself down again to a warm, drowsy- scented dining-room, with a productive hinterland of kitchen and cellar beyond it, and beyond that an important outer world of loose box and harness-room and stable-yard; further again a dark hushed region where pheasants roosted and owls flitted and foxes prowled.
Hum noticed it before it had been there five minutes, flew to it, and began a regular survey, perching now here, now there, till he seemed to find a twig that exactly suited him; and after that he roosted there every night. Who does not see in this change all the signs of reflection and reason that are shown by us in thinking over our circumstances, and trying to better them?
The cloud slowly gathered over the pines in the direction of the path; the fowls carefully tripped up the path, and after a prudent pause at the hole, disappeared one by one within; the chickens picked in a gradually contracting circuit, and finally one or two stole furtively to the cabin door, and after a brief reconnaissance came in, and fluttered up the ladder to the loft, where they had been born, and yet roosted.
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